Final Fantasy: A Crystal Compendium – Final Fantasy: All The Bravest

As part of the Final Fantasy: A Crystal Compendium project, I have chosen to write about Final Fantasy: All The Bravest.  Why not take a look at the hub page and find out what other games in the series people have written about?  After you’ve read my one obviously…

So, All The Bravest then.  It’s clever because it abbreviates to ATB which is a thing from earlier Final Fantasy games.  Clever, honest.  If only they’d put half as much thought into the game as they did into the “clever” title.  Always Total Bollocks also has the same abbreviation.  Maybe they should have used that.  Does it sound like I’m being a bit mean?  Possibly, but it’s not without reason.

All The Bravest is terrible, but I can’t say it’s the worst game I’ve ever played.  That’s because I’m not sure this even qualifies as a game.  Sure, you can win and lose, you level up and earn money, you even confront monsters from the Final Fantasy series.  It’s not a game though.  You don’t actually play at all.  The most interaction you have with this product is wildly swiping your hand across the screen in the hope you’ll win, and spending real money to increase your chances of winning.  This is not a game!  This is an insulting cash grab capitalising on a well respected series.

Rub your phone until the wolves fall down!

We begin our “adventure” by being told that monsters are invading the world and we must gather a party to confront and defeat them.  We are shown the game’s one and only mechanic: rub the screen really quickly to make your characters attack the monster!  Do this until either the monster dies or your run out of characters.  If all your characters are knocked out, you will need to wait several hours for them to revive before attempting the battle again.  Or…OR…you could spend some real money on a magic hourglass (or something along those lines) to revive them all instantly and continue the battle!  How very thoughtful to include this feature in the game.

Continue to rub your phone!

As you level up, you unlock new characters for your party, as well as increasing the party size.  I can’t find a way to (or haven’t reached that point) set up your party based on the characters you have unlocked.  I think they just randomly decide on which characters are included.  The soldiers are mostly classic characters, such as Fighter and White Mage, but you can acquire more iconic characters from the series.  For a fee of course.  Want Cloud?  Best pay some real cash for a random character (we all love loot boxes right).  Need some Rinoa?  Open your wallet!

I got a fever. The only thing that can cure it is not playing this anymore.

I know free to play games need to earn their money, but most of the successful ones are actually games and not a screen slapping simulator.  This one simply screams “I’m just here for your money” thanks to the lack of any engaging mechanics or meaningful content.  The whole game is linear (from what I can be bothered to reach anyway), the “combat” is boring, and the monetisation of the app is insulting.  Don’t touch it.

The music is pretty nice though…